1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inverter driver and a lamp driver having the same. More particularly, the present invention relates to a protection circuit in an inverter driver, and a lamp driver having the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an inverter for an LCD backlight is a DC/AC transformer for generating a high voltage to turn on a cold cathode discharge lamp. After converting the DC power to AC power, the inverter drives a discharge lamp using a transformer that has a first side connected to a half bridge circuit or a full bridge circuit and a second side connected to a load side of a discharge lamp. Such an inverter essentially includes a plurality of protection circuits for preventing a transformer from generating an over voltage when startup or open lamp occurs.
The protection circuit can include an open lamp regulation (OLR) circuit and an open lamp protection (OLP) circuit. The open lamp regulation circuit and the open lamp protection circuit operate using a voltage feedback signal or a current feedback signal at the second side of the transformer and include diodes. However, such protection circuits need a lot of external elements such as diodes because the protection circuits are connected to each of a plurality of discharge lamps that form a load side of a discharge lamp. Therefore, the protection circuit occupies a large area in the inverter, and the unit cost of the inverter increases.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.